It's a testament to Margaret Thatcher's belief that naked self-interest always defeats class solidarity that she imagined that the 1984-5 miners' strike would end swiftly due to pressure from miners' wives. Among the tranche of documents in this year's National Archives release are handwritten notes Thatcher took during a meeting she held with the wives of strike-breaking Welsh miners.

Rose Hunter, from North Staffordshire Miners' Support Group, recounts her experiences at a commemorative event in Bethnal Green: "Thatcher thought the women would get the men back to work. No. We wouldn't put up with it. You don't attack our community, our comrades, our sisters. So we organised." And so Women Against Pit Closures formed 30 years ago, organised quickly and with remarkable tenacity for those with little direct experience of campaigning – and women's groups sprung up and flourished in every mining community in Britain.

From the soup kitchens they began with, the women involved became increasingly politicised. Sometimes dismissed as little more than food distributors, the women marched, campaigned, collected money and picketed alongside the men. One of the most infamous photographs of the strike shows Sheffield WAPC's Lesley Boulton at the "battle of Orgreave", raising her hand as a police officer on horseback prepares to strike her with his truncheon.

The women were keen to forge links with others experiencing systemic oppression – visiting Northern Ireland and welcoming the lesbian and gay miners' support groups which drove to join pickets. Women from the Midlands noted how Asian communities ploughed money into the strikes when they saw the police treatment of miners mirroring their own experiences, and when Asian workers at Kewal Brothers clothing factory in Smethwick went on strike in 1984, 150 women and miners joined them in solidarity on their picket line.

The hardship of the strike was undeniable and the sight of men returning to work devastating for many, but especially for women, the period of the strike was some of the most exciting years of their life. Growing up in south Wales, my family and neighbours recall the outcome of the strike with bitterness, but feel immense pride at the challenge levelled against the state and police, and the role women played in that.

The strike could never have happened without the women's groups, on the picket, facing immense brutality and sexual harassment from the police, who called them "Scargill's slags". Speak to former miners and anyone from a community that was touched by the strike, and the language they still use is reminiscent of conversations about war: not just the anger and very real sense of fighting a physically present enemy but the "blitz spirit" of trying to survive as a community against the odds, and the camaraderie that brought to mining villages.

WAPC is still active, nationally and internationally, today: the dynamism and sisterhood of the groups wasn't lost when the dispute ended. A lot of the women around the country fighting government cuts now are working-class women who were involved in WAPC or remember their mother's involvement, and are again galvanised by cuts directly affecting them and their community. The strike remains in the collective memory of the areas most affected by austerity, and the sense of history repeating itself as the government continues to cut benefits to the poorest in society is often voiced in local anti-cuts meetings. For many, the strike was formative in their political education. Mining communities were always political and class conscious, but the strike put their struggle in a wider context, gave them a chance to travel, find their voice, and emboldened them.

And it's noticeable in what's been passed down, from generation to generation. Women involved say their children and grandchildren are more politically active. After the strike many women carried on campaigning, but for others it was a watershed moment in their personal lives: many left their husbands, started studying, got jobs themselves. Turning fear into anger and anger into action was an integral part of the strike and for many working-class women, this was a welcome catalyst for changing their lives.

As the anniversary of the 1984 miners' strike approaches, its figurehead Arthur Scargill has become a recluse, at war with the current NUM leadership. John Harris went in search of Yorkshire's living legend … and found him

Earlier this month Maltby colliery in South Yorkshire closed down for good. At the end of a winter that saw 40% of our electricity needs met by coal – most of it imported – we witnessed the poignant closing ceremony